


sing a song about the room we're in

by millepertuis



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: F/M, Sibling Incest, You Can't Go Home Again, implied Edmund Pevensie/Lucy Pevensie - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-20
Updated: 2012-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-16 16:51:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/541720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millepertuis/pseuds/millepertuis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She knows Lucy can’t remember their mother’s face, but Susan looks at Peter and can’t forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sing a song about the room we're in

**Author's Note:**

> For akzseinga's prompt at the [Incest](http://carnivors.livejournal.com/16257.html?thread=140929#t140929) comment ficathon.  
> Title from Richard Siken's poem _Unfinished Duet_.

 

“Aslan hasn’t come back yet,” she says. She refuses to look at him: he’s never been able to hide anything from her, and she doesn’t want to see the truth in his eyes (they’re all alone).

“No, he hasn’t,” Peter agrees, and that’s not what he’s supposed to say.

She’s cold and afraid and lonely, and he would hold her and make everything go away if she only looked his way, but she’s afraid he wouldn’t let go.

(More than anything, she’s afraid she wouldn’t want him to.)

“But I need him,” she whispers. She can feel his eyes on her, and maybe she’s the one who never could hide anything from him.

 

 

 

She knows Lucy can’t remember their mother’s face, but Susan looks at Peter and can’t forget.

 

 

 

She arrives in the library and they’re already there, so absorbed in each other they don’t notice her, giggling and exchanging secrets in whispers, their heads bent together over a large book.

Lucy presses her lips against the corner of his mouth once, innocent and childlike, and Ed smiles. It’s a beautiful image, the children that aren’t children anymore, and Susan goes back to her rooms and cries for hours.

She doesn’t come out for dinner and plans to spend at least the whole week locked up in her quarters, but Peter breaks in on the morning of the third day.

He throws her over his shoulder and carries her to his own chambers, where he drops her unceremoniously on his bed.

“If you want to sulk, do it where I can keep an eye on you,” he states, and then goes to his desk and starts looking at the plans for the new bridge as if she wasn’t there at all.

“Well, aren’t you going to ask?” she demands imperiously after a few minutes of silence.

“No.”

She throws a pillow but he deflects it with his arm without even looking up.

He’s between her and the doors, and even if she could reach the window and open it before he got to her, she’d probably crash to the ground.

She insults him for a while, and then starts tearing the rest of his pillows apart when he keeps on ignoring her. He doesn’t notice until the bed's covered in white feathers.

“ _Susan!_ ”

She throws a candle at him, and then a book from his nightstand and then one of her shoes that finally lands on his head.

“Will you stop this?” he snaps. She answers by tossing her remaining shoe at him.

She rises when he gets up, furious. He climbs on the bed and corners her against the wall. Their feet are sinking into the mattress, and she feels like she’s about to fall. He captures her wrists to stop her from hitting him.

“Let me go, Peter!”

They’re the same height, but he’s always making her feel like she’s so much smaller.

“What is it, then?”

She tries to kick him, but he blocks her with his knee.

“You wanted me to ask, didn’t you? I’m asking now, so you’d better answer me already!”

“Go away!”

She tries to hide her face, but they’re the same height and he’s pressing her against the wall and there’s nowhere to run to.

“Is it what this is all about?” he asks, his eyes studying her.

He’s too close and too far away still.

 _Please don’t look at me_ , she wants to say, but she’s a Queen and she never begs, not even to him.

“What– I don’t know what you mean,” she lies, avoiding his gaze.

“Why do you always have to make everything so difficult?”

“Why do _you_?”

She can feel his breath against her skin.

“Are you _lonely_ , Susan?” he hisses. “Do you want to go back, is that it?”

“ _No_! Of course not.”

“Then what?”

“You don’t understand.”

“Oh, I don’t now?”

His eyes are narrowed and dark; she leans in and he meets her halfway.

They’re both breathless when they break away.

“It’s not– Everything isn’t about you, Peter.”

“Isn’t it?” he asks.

He looks a little desperate, a little shattered, and so young still; she could break him, she thinks, if she wanted to.

His hand is soft on her face, his thumb softly stroking her cheek. He removes a feather from her hair, and waits until it hits the bed before he disentangles himself from her and leaves. She could reach out and make him stay, but she doesn’t.

(She _wants_ to break him, sometimes.)

 

 

 

That night, she goes on the balcony. She sits on the balustrade and waits – waits for the world to end, for the lightning to struck her down where she stands, for Peter to tell her everything will be alright, but mostly she waits for Aslan to come back.

He doesn’t.

 

 

 

She looks at him and remembers someone else; he’s supposed to be older and wiser, different. He had so many scars and she knew every single one of them, but they’re all gone now, and she’s afraid she might forget.

Her clothes feel wrong, but she’s the one who’s too small.

“Susan.”

He’s looking at her too, he’s always looking at her, and she was someone else too. There are things she wants– wanted, coy smiles that made him blush and kisses in the crook of her neck, but she’s too young now, or maybe she’s too old.

Their hands are close on the table, almost touching but not quite. He would have taken hers, once, and maybe he would now, if she let him.

“What?”

She doesn’t mean to sound so sharp; he’s a stranger, but then, so is she.

“It’s going to be okay,” he promises, and in his eyes there’s something ancient and daring and magnificent, and she realizes then that maybe he didn’t change.

She withdraws her hands from the table and tries not to ignore the pain in his eyes and in her chest. It won’t go away anytime soon, she might as well get used to it.

(She looks at him and sees a king in a boy’s clothes.)

 


End file.
